


A reasonable doubt

by Naraht



Category: Return to Night - Mary Renault
Genre: 1930s, M/M, Oxford, Queer Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-24 15:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3773638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and James speculate about a certain young man's sexuality. But who is James really wondering about?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A reasonable doubt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AJHall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJHall/gifts).



> Thanks to Lilliburlero for beta-reading and general encouragement.

James sat in Sam's window, gazing out at an expanse of lawn glowing with the verdancy of Trinity term at its height. The sun was lowering now, the summer evening warm and soft. Its peacefulness was broken only by the distant sound of a cricket match in progress. No student could have felt a greater sense of well being, for James was a second year, and therefore could enjoy the good weather safe in the knowledge that his finals were still an unfathomable age away.

His own rooms were on the same staircase, only two floors down. But their view was half obstructed by a rhododendron bush, and they did not have a window seat. Also - and this was the decisive point - Sam was not there.

Sam was leaning contentedly back in his favourite armchair, smoking his meerschaum pipe and looking towards James with a quiet benevolence that seemed to James to accord ill with his planned career in the law.

A thought floated into James's mind, troubling the serenity of the evening, but he tucked it aside. Not for the first time. Wanting a distraction, he looked instead towards the magazine that lay open across Sam's flannel-clad thighs.

"Read it yet? Did you see that they've made Fleming this term's Isis Idol?"

Sam startled a little. "H. B.?"

"No, you fool," said James, chuckling. "J. R., of course."

"Oh, that makes more sense."

"It's a waste, you know. There are men in the Cabinet still wondering what they did wrong never to get in, and here Lavenham says that he wouldn't even look at the article. Plus these journos never tell you what you really want to know."

"Why, what do you want to know?" Sam took up the magazine and began leafing through it with the steady, single-minded intensity that had earned him a First in Mods. "Here it is. OUDS... University Air Squadron, that's interesting, I didn't know that... 'darling of the aesthetic set'... 'his proudest achievement is having punted to Islip and back in under seven hours'... Seems exhaustive enough to me. Has he got some dark secret?"

"A chap like that, one somehow feels he ought to. But no, I don't think so. But everyone's wondering - is he that way, or not? A beauty like that, wouldn't you think someone would know? Lavenham says certainly not, but I'm sure that's just pique on his part since Fleming turned him down. Fleming never talks about girls."

"Not everyone talks about girls."

"No." James felt his heart skip in his chest. "And most of the ones who don't are queer."

Sam did not react to this. "What does he talk about?"

"Theatre."

"Well, he _was_ very good as Oberon. Hilary was impressed; she doesn't impress easily."

James spared a thought for hoping that he'd made some impression upon Sam's young aunt as well. She had swept into college a few weeks ago and carried them both away, as a unit, to tea at the Randolph. She was the first member of Sam's family he had met; he still did not know whether to construe this as a mark of special favour, or whether he had merely been in the right place at the right time. 

"Look, you read Law," he said. "You must know something about evidence. How would a man go about proving it, one way or the other?"

Sam frowned. "We did the Sexual Offences Act last year..."

"That's not what I mean."

"Well, circumstantial evidence, then. What have we got?"

"Charles has a cousin at LMH - Selina Grey, you must have heard of her?" Sam shook his head. "Well, plenty of people have, trust me. Apparently she decided to try her luck with Fleming at a house party over the Easter vac and the poor boy fled in terror _instanter_. Now I wonder what else there was to it; at the time I could only think how little I wanted to know what else the Greys tell each other."

"Probably she just wasn't his type," said Sam. "Wouldn't anyone run?"

"He hangs about with that crowd, though. Lavenham is practically his dearest friend apart from Tranter. He doesn't blink at the things that Charles comes out with. He's at all the parties, doesn't seem to think there's anything peculiar in it."

"Guilt by association," said Sam. "No, it wouldn't stand up in court. You can't put a man away for the company he keeps."

"Or the colour of his hair."

"Pardon?"

"Never mind."

"Vice versa," Sam added, "it's not as if one has to be an aesthete to fancy another chap."

A small spark of hope awoke within James's breast, but he firmly suppressed it.

"Well?" he said. "What else?"

"A bit of how's-your-father could settle it nicely."

James chuckled dryly at Sam's unaccountable fondness for declassé music hall euphemism. "So thought Lavenham. But no joy. If he is getting up to something, then no one knows about it. Perhaps he just keeps it very quiet?"

"Everyone thinks there's more there than there is. Perhaps there really isn't much at all. Probably he just goes back to his room at Trinity and reads _Comic Cuts_."

"Well, he isn't revising, I think we can take that as given. So what's the verdict?"

"In Scotland it would be Not Proven. Either, neither, both? He might like both."

Sam offered this last with an air of triumph, as if he'd produced something rather clever and daring. Not so, by the bohemian standards of 1930s Oxford, but then Sam had never moved in aesthetic circles. It was, James thought, one of his charms.

"If he does," said James, "that only doubles the number of people he's not sleeping with."

"Probably he's just saving himself for his wife. It's not so peculiar, is it, even nowadays? After all, H.B. says..."

"Heaven forfend," said James gloomily, not particularly wanting to hear H. B. Fleming's thoughts on chastity. At the beginning of the year he had rather attached himself to Sam; though Sam had joined in the light mockery when he was out of earshot, there was the suspicion that certain of his plodding, Broad Church sensibilities had found a receptive heart. _He's a kind-hearted soul,_ thought James. _That's all it is._

"There is one simple way to settle the question. You could just ask him."

"Not so simple. He mightn't take it well. You could get yourself a broken nose, asking a man things like that straight out. You'd need to be pretty sure of yourself to do it that way."

"Well, I would," Sam persisted. "If I were really so curious."

"Would you?" James paused. "But you don't need to. After all, you don't care a toss about Fleming."

"No," said Sam slowly. "I don't. But if it were me, I wouldn't mind being asked, if someone really wanted to know. That's all."

They looked at one another. Outside there were distant shouts of triumph from the cricket pitch. James studied the familiar outlines of Sam's face, the freckles scattered almost imperceptibly across his nose, his hazel eyes and his hair burnished to chestnut by the summer sun. Familiarity had made all of these dear to him; he had been caught off guard to see them repeated, in a feminine register, in the features of Sam's young aunt. Yet, whether or not he was the original, Sam was - for James - the only one.

"Oh, James," he said. "Go on with you. Ask me."

But now there was no need.


End file.
